


Seasons

by enigmaticagentscully



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-18 21:06:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4720457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticagentscully/pseuds/enigmaticagentscully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four different seasons, four different Inquisitors, four captured moments in time that find them together.</p><p>Four chapters of around 500 words each.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Summer's Day

The air is hot, sticky, close. Crickets chirrup incessantly in the long grass, unstirred by the slightest breeze. The ground is soaked with blood. It is a beautiful summer’s day.

Cassandra is towering in her rage, fists clenched, back straight, face vibrant with fury. She has been shouting for several minutes and though the words may have varied, they all mean the same thing.

She spits it, like a curse. Like the way she used to say his name.

“You could have _died_.”

“So could you. Nearly did, if I recall the last ten minutes right.” Varric doesn’t shout. He never shouts, you can tell he is truly angry when his voice goes very flat and his eyes go blank and Cassandra hates that she knows this.

“I was fine! And even if I wasn’t, what possible good would it do to get yourself killed as well? Why would you take such a stupid, _stupid_ risk?”

“You know why.”

Her anger is doused in an instant. The silence is oppressive in the heat.

“Varric,” she says quietly. “I know you...you have certain feelings towards me...”

“You know that I love you,” he says.

The silence now is even heavier, her voice even quieter when she finally speaks.

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Wish I wouldn’t love you?” he says. “Or just wish that I wouldn’t say it out loud?” He shrugs, calculated nonchalance. “I thought the truth was important to you, Cassandra. Isn’t that what you’ve always said?”

Her name on his lips is a horrendous intimacy; it crystallises in the air between them. The crickets racket on, unabashed. It is an unbearably hot day, the kind of day that makes you want to strip out of your own skin. Sweat slicks their faces and stings their eyes. The bodies on the ground are already beginning to reek.

A faintly growing voice breaks the air. A warm, familiar voice that sounds like safety, like home, calling her name. It is so natural now. Her head turns with parted lips to reply, almost an instinct.

Varric notices. He has noticed since the beginning, long before they knew themselves. He has always been able to read people; it is something Cassandra might have thought they held in common, once.

“We should let them know where we are,” he says.

“They’ll be worried about us,” he says.

“He’ll be worried about you,” he does not say. He has been not saying a lot of things recently, compensation perhaps for that singular disastrous spill of truth that cannot be taken back. It had not been the first time he had told her something she did not wish to hear, and it wouldn't be the last. He uses the truth like a weapon, striking unexpected, the worse for it's rarity.

Cassandra’s fists clench and unclench, useless by her sides. She tries to hate him.

“I apologise for losing my temper,” she says. “I was concerned, that is all. I...I would not want to see you hurt, on my account.”

He smiles. There is no humour in it, nor bitterness. A smile without meaning, hastily sketched across his face by an unfamiliar hand.

“A little late for that, isn’t it Seeker?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a random drabble I guess, written on the spur of the moment while waiting for the new patch to download
> 
> ...in which I reveal my terrible weakness for Varric/Cass/Inquisitor angst. I love Cass/Varric more than anything but I have to admit this sort of situation appeals to my masochistic side :)


	2. Winter's Night

The night has brought a scattering of stars, and a fragile silence. The castle is cold, grey, skulking in the mountains like a beaten dog. The taste of steel haunts the air.

Varric finds her slumped in the forge, in the dark, staring at nothing. Her breath exhales warm clouds of sharpness.

“You’re drunk,” he says.

She doesn’t look at him. “Yes.”

He doesn’t ask why. Asking questions is not a safe thing to do, in times like these. Instead he joins her on the stone and they watch the fire side by side, dying embers in a black metal cage.

“Your absence today was...noted,” he says quietly, speaking to the air. “Don’t give her an excuse, Seeker.”

Cassandra does not move. She breathes. “I thought she was...” The sentence dies, slurring on her lips. “I don’t know. But not this.”

“It isn’t your fault,” he says.

“You tried to warn me. You saw what she was. Even at the start you saw.”

“I’ve seen what that kind of person becomes when they’re given power.”

The coals in the grate glow cherry red, blood red, sharp crystalline red. The air smells of a burning city.

“You could leave,” she says.

“So could you.”

“And how far do you think I would get?” There is a smile in her voice, a horrible thing. “She will suffer no rivals, I think.”

Varric has never seen her helpless, and it blossoms into a dull agony in his chest. He has no words to mend this. He takes the bottle from her and the liquid burns his throat, tasting of nothing. The room swells and the wind roars against the walls outside. Cassandra trembles next to him, lips moving in a silent prayer.

_blessed are they_

_who stand before the corrupt and the wicked_

_and do not falter_

She turns to him suddenly, focusing, eyes frantic.

“Promise me,” she says. “When all this is over, if I am not...if I am not around any longer...”

“Seeker...”

“You’ll do it yourself, won’t you? You know it must be done, no matter what happens after. We can’t let her...promise me, Varric. Please.”

She has never begged before. Her hand grips his like a vice. It is painful, and soft; the only real thing in the world.

“I promise.”

The coals cool in the grate and the wind murmurs restlessly against the window, and they sit in silence until the early sun cracks over the mountain tops and spills light like an egg yolk across the icy peaks.

They pour fire down their throats until flames stream from their eyes and blur the room to oblivion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm never going to play a really evil Inquisitor, but I have to admit I find the idea fascinating. Someone who fools them all until it's too late, who builds an army of zealots and cronies, who is out to grab as much power as they can and who just loves to be worshipped...
> 
> I intended the first chapter of this to a be a one-off, but I actually enjoyed writing it a lot and when I started writing this one it came out as a sort of companion piece. I thought since it's pretty different to the sort of thing I usually write, it might be a fun challenge to make it into a little mini series.


	3. Autumn Dusk

 

“How is our fearless leader?”

“Asleep.” Cassandra sits down on her bedroll, edging closer to the fire. “I thought it better to let her rest. Her clothes will dry quickly enough.”

She stokes the flames in the small fireplace, restless hands and a familiar crease between her eyes. The fire is low, but its flickering glow spills warmth into the shack, brushes gold against her olive skin. Cassandra stares into it as she speaks.

“She misses him, I think. We’re not yet a week gone and yet she still...” Cassandra sighs, and Varric can hardly tell if it’s exasperation or longing. Perhaps some mixture of the two.

Or perhaps he has enough longing for the both of them.

“She’s fallen head over heels,” says Varric, for something to say. “It’s good that she’s found some happiness in all of this.”

Cassandra shakes her head, not disagreement exactly. “I forget sometimes,” she says, with no particular feeling, “how young she is.”

“You’re hardly over the hill yet, Seeker.”

“Flattery? From you, Varric? How unusual.”

“Just the truth,” he says.

“Even rarer.”

Cassandra smiles, and the ceaseless rain drums out a frantic tattoo on the roof.

She is beautiful. She is beautiful in the same way that mountains are tall and the sun is hot; it is a thoughtless, fundamental part of her. Like the vast depths of the ocean that lies beyond your front door, seen every day, unconsidered and unimportant until...suddenly one day you find yourself _drowning._

He could write a sonnet about the way the raindrops cling to the dark strands of her hair, slide over her skin, across the curve of her collarbone. It’s a disconcerting thought. He has been accused of romanticism before, but never poetry.

Their leader may be too young for this, but Varric is too _old_ , far too old and too stubborn and too cynical for the way his blood thrums through his veins when Cassandra smiles.

“I’d like to dry out a bit before going to sleep,” he says. He lies so effortlessly to her now. Even with the habit of months, he can no longer easily sleep with her here, the warm, vital presence of her next to him. It is too much and nowhere near enough.

“I don’t suppose you brought a book?” he says.

She frowns. “If I give it to you, I’ll have nothing to read.”

“You could always read it to me.” A joke, a poor one. The rain chatters its amusement against the rattling glass windows.

“No.” The world holds its breath, for an instant. Her head bowed, face hidden. “You might read it to...you might read aloud, though. Doubtless you have had more practice.”

She hands the book to him casually, as if it isn’t the most remarkable gift he has ever been given. Their fingers brush lightly as he takes it, heat flaring.

“You are insufferable when you are bored,” she says.

He reads, and Cassandra listens, and the rain roars its applause, and he can’t remember a time when he has been happier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have been writing these as a little break from more plotty fic
> 
> I'm such a sap I just want to see them together, I don't even care how


End file.
